iOS 7 Jailbreak & Piracy Controversy, Apple’s 2014 Plans

In case you missed it, hackers have managed to jailbreak iOS 7. This is a huge deal considering that many of us have been waiting for such a solution for quite some time now. The untethered jailbreak was released by the Evasi0n team and is compatible will all devices that run iOS 7.0 to iOS 7.0.4. The whole process takes about 5 minutes as long as you don’t mind taking a risk to install the app.

There is one big problem with this jailbreak release though. It comes with a Chinese app store called Taig. That store happens to have pirated apps. We certainly don’t support software apps that lead to developers not getting paid for their work. The Evasi0n team does not either:

Preventing piracy is also extremely important to us. We are deeply sorry and embarrassed about the piracy that was seen today. All of us have spoken out vehemently against piracy in the past. We don’t believe it’s right for developers to not get paid for their work. In our agreement with Taig, we contractually bind them to not have piracy in their store. This was an extremely important precondition of working with them. In entering the agreement with them, we had hoped and continue to hope that our cooperation with Taig will improve the piracy situation in China. Many App Stores within China, including those run by large corporations, have many issues with pirated software. Promoting an app store that is required not to have piracy with our jailbreak, we believe, will help developers.

We are very upset that despite our agreement and review by their team, piracy was found in the store. It was not acceptable and they have been strenuously working to resolve the problem in good faith, and have removed all instances of it that we have brought to their attention. We will continue to monitor this issue and work to resolve it completely. Taig will be pulled from the jailbreak if it cannot be resolved.

Have we seen the last of this controversy? That remains to be seen. It’s still nice that the jailbreak community caught this quickly.

Speaking of Apple products, Tim Cook wants you to know that Apple has lots of big plans to 2014. Actually, he wants Apple employees to know that big plans are underway:

We have a lot to look forward to in 2014, including some big plans that we think customers are going to love.

The actual memo is a bit longer. But let’s face it, Apple is going to release its iWatch in 2014. Will we see other wearable products? The company could always surprise us. It will be interesting to see where Apple goes with iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3.